Red Bull’s decision to make aggressive design choices with ဣtheir RB20 car has been questioned with a comparison to when Adrian Newey got it “horribly wrong” during his time at McLaren.

Even though Red Bull dominated the 2023 F1 season, winning 21 of the 22 races, the team has heavily revised their car for this year, particul🧔arly around the sidepod area.

To the naked eye, the RB20 sidepods are in aꦗ similar style to Mercedes’ from the start of last year,♏ which were often - wrongly - pointed at as the reason for their drop in performance.

During F1’s te༺sting coverage in Bahrain, commentator Alex Jacques made reference to when the Newey-designed McLaren MP4-18 was plagued♈ with problems early on.

“How do you make the right choice🌠? How do you maﷺke the wrong choice? Does Adrian Newey ever get it wrong?” Jacques said.

“If you𝓰 remember the McLaren that he got horribly ཧwrong. It was the MP4-18, which was revolutionary at the time, had things like a blown diffuser, which we’d seen many, many years later.

𝓰“He hasn’t always got it right, and McLaren had to revert to the old car back then.

“It would be fascinating wouldn’t it if Red Bull needed to pick ๊a B-spe⛦c RB20.”

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer pointed out that Newey’s last arguably f🌞lop was 21 years ago - a🍰 lengthy time.

“When we go back 21 years… that was a rare miss, wasn’t it? That was a rare miss in the Newey catal🌌ogue of hits,♏” Palmer said.

Palmer - who drove for Renault in 2016 and 2017 - believes Red Bull’s track record of delivering great cars, even during Mercedes’ dominant years, means it’s 𒅌unlikely the RB20 will take them backwards.

“When you see this Red Bull that looks something 🃏different to the rest, when was the last time Red Bull had a miss✨? Because in the Mercedes-dominant years, Lewis won the titles and Nico Rosberg had one, it was Mercedes dominating,” he added.

“But 🉐Red Bull had the Renault engine at the time then they swiꦆtched to Honda and it took a while to get to Mercedes’ level of performance but the chassis was always superb.

“The aerodynamics was superb and Ricciardo could win in Monaco, he won in 2014 on tracks like Hungary, where you need the aerodynamic pe𒐪rformance, you 𒆙need the chassis to be really good.

“On the long straights they w🍷ere hopeless. At Monza they would always take a grid place penalty because they would just wri▨te it off as a weekend and that’s the power unit really.

“I can’t remember the last time Red 𝓰Bull didn’t have a very strong ch🌳assis, aero package.”